Covid-19: Considerations on requirements to recommend herbal preparations

Abstract

For doctors and pharmacists involved in phytotherapy, two questions will stay for an indefinite time especially in individual counselling. 1. Is there a possibility of primary prevention especially for people at high risk for infection, e.g. through herbal immunostimulants and adaptogens? 2. Can the course of an infection favourably be influenced by herbal agents with known beneficial effects on the respiratory system or even intrinsic antiviral properties? The objective of this article is to provide preliminary recommendations for the use of phytotherapy. The authors are aware of the limitations of these recommendations. At this time, they can only be based on analogy models in both preclinical and clinical evaluation. Several aspects of preclinical results were already presented in issue 2-2020 of this journal [1]. This article here concludes with a perspective on chances and limitations of prospective clinical research with phytodrugs.